


Later Than You Realized

by APgeeksout



Category: NXT, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Embedded Images, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-16 09:10:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4619739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You've earned yourself five minutes to convince me you're not a complete asshole," he said, hauling himself to his feet and motioning Baron inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Later Than You Realized

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedLeaderfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedLeaderfic/gifts).



  
  
  
  


Corey put his phone to sleep and plugged it in to charge, walking away from the socket so that he wouldn't be tempted to reply anymore.

He wasn't wrong to be pissed at Baron. And still, he knew that given half a chance he'd somehow wind up apologizing, trying to be the guy who was too metal to get bent out of shape over never being someone's priority. He made himself hold on to the feeling of standing at the edge of the crowd, scanning the dancefloor as though there were any chance at all that somebody in the place might be tall enough to block his view of Baron, his own refill long gone, Baron's gone sweaty and warm in his hand, and the sinking recognition - faster at least than it had come the first time, or even the second - that the Lone Wolf wasn't coming back.

He was sitting on the porch, closing in on the bottom of the last beer in the house - even if he sent Baron packing p.d.q., he would at least be able to restock the fridge - when he heard the congested rumble of Baron's motorcycle drift up his block and cut off when he reached the little circle of light beneath the lamp across the street. Baron's shadow separated from the one cast by his ride and stretched through the warm night toward Corey, and he drained the bottle to the familiar sound of heavy boots crunching up his drive.

"Peace offering?" He stopped at the bottom of the stairs and held up a six-pack. Corey recognized it as a build-your-own from the liquor store nearest the Performance Center and realized, as he looked determinedly at the bottles and not at Baron's earnest face, that it was stocked with mismatched bottles from half-a-dozen micro-breweries that he'd tried and mostly failed to turn his co-workers on to. As apologies went, it was a pretty good start.

"You've earned yourself five minutes to convince me you're not a complete asshole," he said, hauling himself to his feet and motioning Baron inside.

"Oh, I'm definitely an asshole," Baron said. "Just kind of hoping that I'm still an asshole you want to talk to when this is all over."

Corey led the way into the kitchen, lifted the beer from Baron's hands, and stashed it in the fridge, all without a word. He slouched against the closed door, crossed his arms, and looked expectantly to Baron, who hadn't done anything to break the awkward quiet between them either. Instead, he was just standing in the kitchen doorway, holding himself still and looking intently at Corey. Work being what it was, Baron spent a fair amount of time staring inscrutably into the camera, while Corey found new and interesting (and, admittedly, sometimes over-the-top) ways to describe his efficiency and strength and dominance.

Tonight was different, though, and all he could make himself say was, "Time's ticking on your five minutes."

"I really am sorry," Baron echoed again, "I didn't want to leave." His broad shoulders slumped a little, leaving him looking hangdog and forlorn. "Like hanging out with you," he added.

Corey scoffed. "I can tell, by the way you keep bailing whenever we're out somewhere."

"It's not you. There were some people there I needed to avoid."

"And you couldn't do me the courtesy of just telling me you were dodging your ex or whatever?" Corey pushed off of the fridge and took a step to Baron in his frustration. "Were you raised by wolves? Like, really inconsiderate wolves?"

"Might be easier if I had been." Baron laughed. Normally, Corey took a considerable amount of pride in being the one to make him laugh, but this one was thin and edgy, and he didn't like being responsible for it.

"I don't think I'm being too clingy, expecting a "goodbye", you know?" he said softly.

"No, I know. It just wouldn't have been good for them to know you were with me."

Corey's throat went dry at that. "'They' who, exactly?" If Baron was ducking cops or bookies or dealers or something, then maybe it was better to let this whole thing end before it really got started.

Baron looked away and mumbled something Corey couldn't make out, even though he wasn't more than an arm's-length away.

"What?"

Baron sighed and dropped a hand heavy on his shoulder. "This is really hard. Gotta show you something." With that, Baron juiced his shoulder then let go, taking a step back to bend down and tug at the laces of his boots.

"No, by all means, take your shoes off and stay a while."

"Last time I was here, I kind of got the impression you wouldn't have minded me taking some of this off." Baron looked up at him with a wolfish grin that faded quickly when Corey didn't return its warmth. "Just trust me for a sec, okay?"

He gave a noncommittal shrug and turned back to the fridge, reaching in for a fresh beer. He didn't offer one to Baron; he hadn't decided yet whether he wanted him to stay. When he turned back to face him, Baron was barefoot and had stripped out of his shirt, the heart on his chest laid bare. He was watching him again, with such an intensity and air of misery that it made Corey's own heart lurch.

"This is it," he said regretfully. "It's gonna be weird for you, but it's okay. Really."

That said, Baron took a deep, slow breath and then... Corey couldn't have said exactly what happened next. He didn't look away - he was sure he couldn't have if he'd wanted to - but it was like his brain refused to take in what he was seeing. He'd have blamed it on the last concussion, all those residual neurological issues he'd been warned about asserting themselves. Except.

Except that in the end, there was still a fucking wolf in his kitchen.

A wolf that cocked its head at him and made a plaintive noise in the back of its throat and looked up at him with Baron's clear, dark eyes.

"Holy shit," he whispered. "Holy fuck."

He'd tried to curb his profanity since he'd landed the announcing gig. It made it that much easier to keep himself PG during a broadcast. Still, if now wasn't the time for a lot of good old-fashioned cursing, then the time would never come again.

His bottle hit the floor in a burst of IPA and amber glass, and Baron... the wolf... wolf-Baron padded over and butted his big, dark head against his thigh, nudging him away from the shards. He stumbled dumbly along with him for the three or four steps his legs took before crumpling under him, dropping him to the floor for a wolf's-eye-view. One black paw, sleek and strong and surprisingly delicate, pressed into his thigh, and then his brain checked out again, declining to record the transition from thick, uniformly black fur to colorfully-inked human skin.

But however it happened, Baron - normal, broody, broad-shouldered dude-Baron - was sitting on the floor beside him, big hand warm on his thigh, thumb tracing a slow, soothing stroke over the fabric of his jeans.

"So, I'm an asshole. And a werewolf."

Corey let out a hysterical yelp of a laugh. He scooted over to lean his back against the wall, leaving a just about Baron-sized space beside him.

"You're taking this better than I expected," Baron offered, smiling more easily than before.

"How does this usually go for you?"

Baron shrugged. "I don't know. I, uh, never told anyone before."

He didn't know quite what to do with that; the guy with the snarky comments and neck tattoos wasn't usually high on anyone's list of confidants. He liked the feeling of being someone Baron trusted better than pretty much anything else that had happened today.

"You're making it really hard to keep thinking you're a dick," he said eventually. Just because he was feeling like a sap didn't mean he had to sound like one.

"Score!" Baron shifted to sit next to him, hip pressed into his own. 

"So, this is why you keep disappearing on me?"

"Kind of.  Tonight I was ducking a couple of hunters."

Corey's heart lurched at that word and everything it implied - if there were hunters, then Baron was _hunted_ \- but Baron just resettled a hand on his leg and went on.

"Before, it's been others like me --"

"Your kind?" Corey teased.

Baron made a pained face, like it had only just occurred to him how much more shit Corey would be giving him about that promo now. "Yeah. Looking for trouble, recruiting for their packs, trying to pull me into their political bullshit."

"So there are others? Like, a lot? Are you born as... like..."

"Are you trying to find a good way to ask if I was ever a puppy? 'Cause there really isn't one." Baron shook his head. "But, no, I wasn't born in it, so I don't really know all that stuff."

"Fair enough." He was quiet for a moment, looking down at Baron's hand on him, no different than it had looked or felt before. "Tell me something good about it?"

"I heal like crazy. Not a mark on me." He paused to gesture at his sleeve. "Well, not one I didn't put there on purpose, anyway. Except for the bite."

Corey cringed at that, but still managed to ask, "Where?" He cast his eyes over Baron's chest, bare skin he'd seen lots of times and from lots of angles. Surely he'd have noticed something as gnarly as a bite-wound, even if he'd only been looking in the disinterested, professional capacity he'd never quite been able to manage with Baron.

Baron leaned away from him and tucked a thumb into the waist of his pants, pulling the fabric slowly down his hip. Corey saw the notch of his hipbone and the thick rope of scar tissue that curved over otherwise smooth skin. He wanted not to be a creep only slightly more than he wanted to reach down and trace it with his fingers.

"Hardly need any time to recover now. None of my old football injuries have bothered me since it happened. Like a miracle cure. Kind of." Baron was looking intently at him again, but at the side of his head instead of in his face, and the scrutiny was making him a little antsy.

"You're probably going to regret telling me any of this when you hear my next stupid question," he said, glad to break Baron's unsettling reverie.

"Can't be worse than Saxton. Try me."

"How do the pants work? Like, shouldn't they be in shreds? What happens to them when you're..."

"Werewolf jeans. Special brand. I thought you were supposed to be hip to all this stuff?" Baron laughed, hearty and deep, sounding more and more like the guy Corey'd thought he knew, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder, pulling him in close when he didn't shrug out from beneath it. "Hell if I know," he said, sobering "I just know I get to keep tight clothes when I change back, and I don't think about it too hard in case it quits working."

"Makes sense." Wrestlers could be superstitious in the most ordinary circumstances. Of course being part of something so completely impossible would make that tendency even stronger.

"There's some other good stuff, too," Baron added. He hadn't let go of Corey and his voice was close to his ear and pitched low. "When you show up at the arena, everything smells like electricity."

"And that's good?" he asked.

"Real good," he said, pressing his face into the crook of his neck. "Not quite as good as your heartbeat, though. I can hear it all the way in the ring. The way it jumps up when I hit End of Days. I can hear it now," he continued, and his lips grazed Corey's neck, following the line of his throat to the place where his pulse throbbed beneath the skull inked into sensitive skin.

"I'm not sure my neighbors can't hear it right now." He pressed a couple of fingers beneath Baron's scruffy chin and tipped his face up to catch his mouth in a hard kiss.

"This mean we're okay?" Baron asked, voice deep and rough, when they broke apart. "You're not too freaked out?"

"Nah. Who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?"


End file.
